Okay, sorry about that.

You're good. And we were recording all that. So we got to see like the whole...

Oh, no, this is... Boy, my goodness, this is just a back room.

I can take you in the shop if you want.

When Brian told me about the idea of a place that would marry intellectual formation and spiritual formation,

the light bulb instantly went off my head. Yeah, why has no one done this?

Your welding instructor is the chaplain?

Yeah, that's right.

So Father Dom comes in, offers the sacraments to the men, offers spiritual formation, and then, you know, pulls his stole off and throws his hood on.

We need to get out of this false dichotomy that we create between people that are good with their hands and good with their head.

The unfortunate thing is that a lot of young men have ingested that as well.

And they think that because they have a manual genius and because schools have been built

in such a way that don't actually help them integrate themselves, they somehow think

they're dumb.

And that's a shame that, especially we in the church, we got to get on that right now

and correct that.

Welcome to Loopcast. I am joined today by David Michael Phelps. He is the president of Harmel School of the Trades, which we'll get into in just a moment. David has over 18 years, more now experience in education, administration. He has had a multivarius career professor of English literature and communications at one point. He's been a creative director, film producer and writer.

He's developed marketing campaigns, but now, yes, he is president of Harmel, is it Academy of the

Trades in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But for those of you

who don't know, and I'm so excited to dig into this today, because this is a unique school.

So Harmel's faculty, staff, tradesmen, mentors, they are all committed to one goal, and that is

to help the next generation of Catholic trades men,

...